South MS man mutilated an endangered species off Florida coast. Now, he’ll have to pay
Hong Thanh Nguyen, 62, of Ocean Springs has admitted that he violated the Endangered Species Act, severing the rostrum of a smalltooth sawfish on a shrimp boat off the Florida Keys.
U.S. District Judge Todd Gee has sentenced Nguyen to one year on probation, a news release from the U.S. Justice Department says. The charge was transferred from Florida to Gulfport, part of the federal government’s Southern District court system.
Court records show that Nguyen was aboard the commercial shrimp boat Miss Theresa near Monroe County, Florida, “when the smalltooth sawfish became entangled in the boat’s fishing net,” the news release says. He used a knife to cut the rosturm from the endangered species, the news release says.
The rostrum is where sawfish get their name, NOAA says. The fish are found in the United States off the coastal waters of Florida. Their numbers greatly declined in the second half of the 20th Century because of habitat loss from development and fisheries bycatch, NOAA says.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Law Enforcement investigated the case.
